Fools die

Chapter 10

In Gronevelt’s penthouse suite, Cully stared through huge windows. The red and green python neon Strip ran out to the black desert mountains. Cully was not thinking of Merlyn or Jordan or Diane. He was nervously waiting for Gronevelt to come out of the bedroom, preparing his answers, knowing that his future was at stake.

It was an enormous suite, with a built-in bar for the living room, big kitchen to service the formal dining room; all open to the desert and encircling mountains. As Cully moved restlessly to another window, Gronevelt came through the archway of the bedroom.

Gronevelt was impeccably dressed and barbered, though it was after midnight. He went to the bar and asked Cully, “You want a drink?” His Eastern accent was New York or Boston or Philadelphia. Around the living room were shelves filled with books. Cully wondered if Gronevelt really read them. The newspaper reporters who wrote about Gronevelt would have been astonished to think so.

Cully went over to the bar and Gronevelt made a gesture for him to help himself. Cully took a glass and poured some scotch into it. He noticed Gronevelt was drinking plain club soda.

“You’ve been doing good work,” Gronevelt said. “But you helped that guy Jordan at the baccarat table. You went against me. You take my money and you go up against me.”

“He was a friend of mine,” Cully said. “It wasn’t a big deal. And I knew he was the kind of guy that would take care of me good if he was winners.”

“Did he give you anything,” Gronevelt asked, “before he knocked himself off?”

“He was going to give us all twenty grand, me and that kid that hung out with us and Diane, the blonde that shills baccarat.”

Cully could see that Gronevelt was interested and didn’t seem too pissed off because he had helped Jordan out.

Gronevelt walked over to the huge window and gazed at the desert mountains shining blackly in the moonlight.

“But you never got the money,” Gronevelt said.

“I was a jerk,” Cully said. “The Kid said he’d wait until we put Jordan on the plane, so me and Diane said we’d wait too. That’s a mistake I’ll never make again.”

Gronevelt said calmly, “Everybody makes mistakes. It’s not important unless the mistake is fatal. You’ll make more.” He finished off his drink. “Do you know why that guy Jordan did it?”

Cully shrugged. “His wife left him. Took him for everything he had, I guess. But maybe there was something wrong with him physically, maybe he had cancer. He looked like hell the last few days.”

Gronevelt nodded. “That baccarat shill, she a good fuck?”

Cully shrugged. “Fair.”

At that moment Cully was surprised to see a young girl come out of the bedroom area into the living room. She was all made up and dressed to go out. She had her purse slung jauntily over her shoulder. Cully recognized her as one of the seminudes in the hotel stage show. Not a dancer but a show girl. She was beautiful and he remembered that her bare breasts on the stage had been knockouts.

The girl gave Gronevelt a kiss on the lips. She ignored Cully, and Gronevelt did not introduce her. He walked her to the door, and Cully saw him take out his money clip and slip a one-hundred-dollar bill from it. He held the girl’s hand as he opened the door and the hundred-dollar bill disappeared. When she was gone, Gronevelt came back into the room and sat down on one of the two sofas. Again he made a gesture and Cully sat down in one of the stuffed chairs facing him.

“I know all about you,” Gronevelt said. “You’re a countdown artist. You’re a good mechanic with a deck of cards. From the work you’ve done for me I know you’re smart. And I’ve had you checked out all the way down the line.”

Cully nodded and waited.

“You’re a gambler but not a degenerate gambler. In fact, you’re ahead of the game. But you know, all countdown artists eventually get barred from the casinos. The pit bosses here wanted to throw you out long ago. I stopped them. You know that.”

Cully just waited.

Gronevelt was staring him straight in the eye. “I’ve got you all taped except for one thing. That relationship you had with Jordan and the way you acted with him and that other kid. The girl I know you didn’t give a fuck about. So before we go any further explain that to me.”

Cully took his time and was very careful. “You know I’m a hustler,” he said. “ Jordan was a strange wacky kind of guy.

I had a hunch I could make a score with him. The kid and girl fell into the picture.”

Gronevelt said, “That kid, who the hell was he? That stunt he pulled with Cheech, that was dangerous.”

Cully shrugged. “Nice kid.”

Gronevelt said almost kindly, “You liked him. You really liked him and Jordan or you never would have stood with them against me.”

Suddenly Cully had a hunch. He was staring at the hundreds of volumes of books stacked around the room. “Yeah, I liked them. The Kid wrote a book, didn’t make much money. You can’t go through life never liking anybody. They were really sweet guys. There wasn’t a hustler bone in either of them. You could trust them. They’d never try to pull a fast one on you. I figured it would be a new experience for me.”

Gronevelt laughed. He appreciated the wit. And he was interested. Though few people knew it, Gronevelt was extremely well read. He treated it as a shameful vice. “What’s the Kid’s name?” He asked it offhand, but he was genuinely interested. “What’s the name of the book?”

“His name is John Merlyn,” Cully said. “I don’t know the book.”

Gronevelt said, “I never heard of him. Funny name.” He mused for a while, thinking it over. “That his real name?’

“Yeah,” Cully said.

There was a long silence as if Gronevelt were pondering something, and then he finally sighed and said to Cully, “Fm going to give you the break of your life. If you do your job the way I tell you to and if you keep your mouth shut, you’ll have a good chance of making some big money and being an executive in this hotel. I like you and I’ll gamble on you. But remember, if you fuck me, you’re in big trouble. I mean big trouble. Do you have a general idea of what Fm talking about?”

“I do,” Cully said. “It doesn’t scare me. You know I'm a hustler. But Fm smart enough to be straight when I have to.”

Gronevelt nodded. “The most important thing is a tight mouth.” And as he said this, his mind wandered back to the early evening he had spent with the show girl. A tight mouth. It seemed to be the only thing that helped him these days. For a moment he had the sense of weariness, a failing of his powers, that had seemed to come more often in the past year. But he knew that just by going down and walking through his casino he would be recharged. Like some mythic giant, he drew power from being planted on the life-giving earth of his casino floor, from all the people working for him, from all the people he knew, rich and famous and powerful who came to be whipped by his dice and cards, who scourged themselves at his green felt tables. But he had paused too long, and he saw Cully watching him intently, with curiosity and intelligence working. He was giving this new employee of his an edge.

“A tight mouth,” Gronevelt repeated. “And you have to give up all the cheap hustling, especially with broads. So what, they want presents? So what if they clip you for a hundred here, a thousand here? Remember then they are paid off. You are evened out. You never want to owe a woman anything. Anything. You always want to be evened out with broads. Unless you’re a pimp or a jerk. Remember that. Give them a Honeybee.”

“A hundred bucks?” Cully asked kiddingly. “Can’t it be fifty? I don’t own a casino.”

Gronevelt smiled a little. “Use your own judgment. But if she has anything at all going, make it a Honeybee.”

Cully nodded and waited. So far this was bullshit. Gronevelt had to get down to the real meat. And Gronevelt did.

“My biggest problem right now” Gronevelt said, “is beating taxes. You know you can only get rich in the dark. Some of the other hotel owners are skimming in the counting room with their partners. Jerks. Eventually the Feds will catch up with them. Somebody talks and they get a lot of heat. A lot of heat. The one thing I don’t like is heat. But skimming is where the real money is. And that is where you are going to help.”

“I’ll be working in the counting room?” Cully asked.

Gronevelt shook his head impatiently. “You’ll be dealing,” he said. “At least for a while. And if you work out, you’ll move up to be my personal assistant. That’s a promise. But you have to prove yourself to me. All the way. You get what I mean?”

“Sure,” Cully said. “Any risk?”

“Only from yourself,” Gronevelt said. And suddenly he was staring at Cully very quietly and intently and as if he were saying something without words that he wanted Cully to grasp. Cully looked him in the eye and Gronevelt’s face sagged a little with an expression of weariness and distaste, and suddenly Cully understood. If he didn’t prove himself, if he tucked up, he had a good chance of being buried in the desert. He knew that this distressed Gronevelt, and he felt a curious bond with the man. He wanted to reassure him.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Gronevelt,” he said. “I won’t fuck up. I appreciate what you’re doing for me. I won’t let you down.”

Gronevelt nodded his head slowly. His back was turned to Cully, and he was staring out the huge window to the desert and mountains beyond.

“Words don’t mean anything,” he said. “I’m counting on your being smart. Come up to see me tomorrow at noon and I’ll lay everything out. And one other thing.”

Cully made himself look attentive.

Gronevelt said harshly, “Get rid of that fucking jacket you and your buddies always wore. That Vegas Winner shit. You don’t know how that jacket irritated me when I saw you three guys walking through my casino wearing it. And that’s the first thing you can remind me of. Tell that fucking store owner not to order any more of those jackets.”

“OK,” Cully said.

“Let’s have another drink and then you can go,” Gronevelt said. “I have to check the casino in a little while.”

They had, another drink, and Cully was astonished when Gronevelt clicked their glasses together as if to celebrate their new relationship. It encouraged him to ask what had happened to Cheech.

Gronevelt shook his head sadly. “I might as well give you the facts of life in this town. You know Cheech is in the hospital. Officially he got hit by a car. He’ll recover, but you’ll never see him in Vegas again until we get a new deputy police chief.”

“I thought Cheech was connected,” Cully said. He sipped his drink. He was very alert. He wanted to know how things worked on Gronevelt’s level

“He’s connected very big back East,” Gronevelt said. “In fact, Cheech’s friends wanted me to help him get out of Vegas. I told them I had no choice.”

“I don’t get it,” Cully said. “You have more muscle than the sheriff.”

Gronevelt leaned back and drank slowly. As an older and wiser man he always found it pleasant to instruct the young. And even as he did so, he knew that Cully was flattering him, that Cully probably had all the answers. “Look,” he said, “we can always handle trouble with the federal government with our lawyers and the courts; we have judges and we have politicians. One way or another we can fix things with the governor or the gambling control commissions. The deputy police chief’s office runs the town the way we want it. I can pick up the phone and get almost anybody run out of town. We are building an image of Vegas as an absolute safe place for gamblers. We can’t do that without the deputy police chief. Now to exercise that power he has to have it and we have to give it to him. We have to keep him happy. He also has to be a certain kind of very tough guy with certain values. He can’t let a hood like Cheech punch his nephew and get away with it. He has to break his legs. And we have to let him. I have to let him. Cheech has to let him. The people back in New York have to let him. A small price to pay.”

“The deputy police chief is that powerful?” Cully asked.

“Has to be,” Gronevelt said. “It’s the only way we can make this town work. And he’s a smart guy, a good politician. He’ll be chief for the next ten years.”

“Why just ten?” Cully asked.

Gronevelt smiled. “He’ll be too rich to work,” Gronevelt said. “And it’s a very tough job.”

– -

After Cully left, Gronevelt prepared to go down to the casino floor. It was now nearly two in the morning. He made his special call to the building engineer to pump pure oxygen through the casino air-conditioning system to keep the gamblers from getting sleepy. He decided to change his shirt. For some reason it had become damp and sticky during his talk with Cully. And as he changed, he gave Cully some hard thought.

He thought he could read the man. Cully had believed that the incident with Jordan was a mark against him with Gronevelt. On the contrary, Gronevelt had been delighted when Cully stuck up for Jordan at the baccarat table. It proved that Cully was not just your run-of-the mill, one-shot hustler, that he wasn’t one of your fake, scroungy, crooked shafters. It proved that he was a hustler in his heart of hearts.

For Gronevelt had been a sincere hustler all his life. He knew that the true hustler could come back to the same mark and hustle him two, three, four, five, six times and still be regarded as a friend. The hustler who used up a mark in one shot was bogus, an amateur, a waster of his talent. And Gronevelt knew that the true hustler had to have his spark of humanity, his genuine feeling for his fellowman, even his pity of his fellowman. The true genius of a hustler was to love his mark sincerely. The true hustler had to be generous, compassionately helpful and a good friend. This was not a contradiction. All these virtues were essential to the hustler. They built up his almost rocklike credibility. And they were all to be used for the ultimate purpose. When as a true friend he stripped the mark of those treasures which he, the hustler, coveted or needed for his own life. And it wasn’t that simple. Sometimes it was for money. Sometimes it was to acquire the other man’s power or simply the leverage that the other man’s power generated. Of course, a hustler had to be cunning and ruthless, but he was nothing, he was transparent, he was a one-shot winner, unless he had a heart. Cully had a heart. He had shown that when he had stood by Jordan at the baccarat table and defied Gronevelt.

But now the puzzle for Gronevelt was: Did Cully act sincerely or cunningly? He sensed that Cully was very smart. In fact, so smart that Gronevelt knew be would not have to keep a check on Cully for a while. Cully would be absolutely faithful and honest for the next three years. He might cut a few tiny corners because he knew that such liberties would be a reward for doing his job well. But no more than that. Yes, for the next few years Cully would be his right-hand man on an operational level, Gronevelt thought. But after that he would have to keep a check on Cully no matter how hard Cully worked to show honesty and faithfulness and loyalty and even his true affection for his master. That would be the biggest trap. A true hustler, Cully would have to betray him when the time was ripe.